single 18650 + XHP70: nitecore TM03

+1

I never understood what tactics people had in mind after using a strobe for ‘self-defense’.

Even if you engage with an element of surprise, your ability to react thereafter is past what a flashlight can do.

And if the strobe blinks more than 10x in California or NY without recharging it would be illegal.

What’s the rate of the strobe on that law Brian? Could a guy dump a 14 round magazine with double taps fast enough for the strobe effect to get him in trouble? :stuck_out_tongue:

ROTFLMAO!

14 rounds period will get you in trouble unless you can do the last 4 silently, as in hellywood silent. (and then bribe the coroner examiner to not see the holes that were seen)

I saw some shooters in July that maybe, just maybe, could beat the strobe. Seeing is as close as I get to that performance. But I think after scorekeeping for them, and shooting an all classifier match, I moved from a D class shooter to a C class shooter just by figuring out what was important and how the formula was weighted. But it’ll take time for USPSA to figure it out and send me a new card. That’s if it happened, but I think it did. It may have happened for others as well if I saw it correctly.

BTW, Max Michel is just a machine. I saw some fantastic times on “my” stage, and he just blew them away. All timing, PERFECT timing. :person_facepalming: Not me. I DQ’ed the match after just 8 rounds. Totally my fault and when I did it I just stopped. I caught myself red handed and made my gun safe. I stayed to score the squad as we were undermanned, of course I scored the event and we were undermanned there as well. But I learned that this old fart can either shoot or score but not both.

For those scratching their heads I gave plenty of clues for an internet search.

+1

That was funny!

for the most part yes, attention getter. but it also act as a self defense tool for me. and since this light has a secondary switch for easy access for instant strobe, i see this as a good self defense light.
i train in the full contact combat art called krav maga, and they teach us how to fight with a flashlight.
and the strobe actually helps a bit. at first, we thought just a blast on turbo mode would do the exact same thing, but no, strobe was more effective. its more disorienting that a constant bright light.

I got my Tiny Monster today. Really like the overall look, something about a mega deep reflector just works for me. :slight_smile:

No pocket clip, no lanyard. The picture on the box shows a pocket clip on the light, oh well. No papers either, which is odd, as I know for a fact that Nitecore puts a brochure of their line-up in the package and has a warranty card as well as a User Manual. I know this because I just got the Nitecore MH20GT yesterday. :wink:

At any rate, really like the light, got the cell charging, will look into opening it up and defeating the proprietary measures after I’ve gotten some readings from it in box stock form. Looks like the battery tube/head is all one piece, so the access will have to come from up top through the bezel.

Will let ya know how all that goes…

Freshly charged TM03 cell, lightbox says this…

55.65 Lumens
662.4
1593.9
3091.2

Now to solder the proprietary top cap onto an Efest 3500mAh cell. :wink: (this proprietary bit taken off the Panasonic PF I bought before the light got here.)

Thanks for the measurements. Assuming the reflector/lens is 83% efficient, that is 3724 LED lumens. Estimating from djozz’s graph, that is about 5A through the emitter. Is this the most powerful 6V boost circuit in a stock flashlight?

Ever once in a while, a leading manufacturer gets it. They listen. Sometimes they even do it without a bunch of hoopla or fanfare. Nitecore is one of those companies. They have been quietly listening in the background and then they put it to work.

And when I see this, inside a light, I get it. And I put it back together and leave it alone. :smiley:

Cree XHP-70 on a proprietary strip of copper, soldered to a thick copper threaded heat sink and powered by 14ga wires. WoooooHoooo! :smiley: The copper sink looks to be about a quarter inch thick. Love it!

My Efest 3500 18650 is a success, 3129.15 lumens with as much run time as can be had from a single 18650 cell. Booya!

nice

can you explain your cell mod?

+1 I’m interested in your cell mod too please!!!

I bought a Nitecore TM03 proprietary cell while waiting for the TM03 to arrive. With all the speculation I just had to unwrap it and see what they did to make it proprietary. There is a circuit board they put on top of the cell, a Panasonic PF, that has a ground ring around the button top. The ground ring has two copper strips running the length of the cell and welded to the bottom of the cell. Then there is a metal disc with yet another copper strip on top of an insulation disc (cardboard) at the end of the cell covering the previous two copper strips. This last ground strip comes back up to the circuit board on top, soldered to the board independent of the main ground leads.

Removing all this from the PF cell I soldered it onto a new Efest 3500mAh dark purple cell that is rated as 10A continuous, 20A pulse, or essentially slightly better current capability than the PF cell and some 600mAh more capacity (PF is 2900mAh) Then I rewrapped the combination with covers given with cell purchases from IMRbatteries.com in Houston. Works just like the factory cell but with a better cell inside. :slight_smile:

(I’ll use the PF cell elsewhere.)

I intended to see what could be done about bypassing this proprietary set-up and allowing use of a normal cell, but when I saw how well made the light was inside I simply put it back together. Probably later I’ll remove the insides and figure out what to do to use normal cells. I don’t really worry about having the protection circuit and that’s mainly all that circuit board adds.

Is the code still available please?

I should have checked to see if that white goo in the threads of the copper sink is thermal paste or adhesive, but I didn’t. Of course I have that to do, right? lol

By chance, did you measure lumens on strobe mode stock form? I’m impressed with the stock nitecore battery. So a efest cell only gave less than a 100 lumen gain.

I don’t measure strobe because it’s always going to be wrong. The meter will try to average the output and show a much lower number than what the actual flash was.

The Efest cell gave a little boost but 600mAh capacity, which was the point. I could have used a 3000mAh cell for more lumens but chose capacity over output.

I’ll try the stock cell with strobe and see what it says, I don’t put much faith in it’s accuracy though. (Let’s face it, on most of our direct drivers the light is pulsed with PWM using full Turbo power to create a low mode, we only see low output, right? The pulse is full Turbo power, which is why this DD isn’t considered efficient.)

As usual, strobe showed a wildly fluctuating meter reading with the highest number I saw at 486 lumens. This only means that the combination of off time and on time averaged 486 lumens, like a PWM mode.

ok thanks, i got all similiar readings.
i forget, were you gonna try in experiment other mods to this light? like change the driver?

looks nice, but those short run times don’t serve much purpose other than a short-term emergency momentary light.